The old saying I swear by for keeping my home tidy and clutter free

For most of my life, I wasn't someone that you would describe as tidy, until I discovered a simple saying that completely changed my outlook on keeping an orderly home.

Before hearing this statement, I was very content with scattered clutter, blissfully living under the assumption that being a neat person was a waste of time.

Then one day, I heard a woman say nine words that would turn me into a person who would be described as a neat-freak: "A place for everything and everything in its place."

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The notion of giving all of my possessions a place in my home and always returning them to that place seemed so simple that I decided to try it.

Before I knew it, I was living in a constantly tidy space, and it didn't even feel like work. I never had to set out to tidy up; instead, I only had to focus on actually cleaning.

Of course, tidy and clean are two separate things, but having a tidy environment all the time makes cleaning much more manageable.

The premise is simple: If you pick something up, you put it back where it belongs afterwards, and that way, everything is always where it belongs.

Gone are the days of desperately searching for an item that would have sat in a pile of clutter. Instead, everything is easy to find.

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I understand that this isn't something that happens overnight.

There was a process of assigning homes for all of my things and building the habit of returning those possessions to where they belonged.

Of course, there are times where some things might find themselves out of place, though it is far easier to put them away when they have somewhere to go.

If you find, like I did, that it takes some time to get into the swing of this process, being proactive for the first two weeks will help the habit stick.

Still, before I knew it, this saying had become second nature.

Like riding a bike, I don't even notice I have this habit, and I can now enjoy a perfectly organised space with minimal effort.

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